Choosing a favorite scene in White House Down is tough. I mean you’ve got the bad guy who, as he’s strolling through the White House after taking it over, casually shoots the portrait of George Washington in the head with a silenced pistol. Then there’s Jamie Foxx shouting “I choose the pen!” before stabbing a bad guy with a pen after a lengthy bad guy monologue about why the pen is no longer mightier than the sword. And who could forget the Scooby Doo ending where President Foxx proudly demands “Get this trash offa my lawn?” (No mask reveal though, sadly. The bad guy was not, much to my chagrin, Old Man Clemens the whole time).

But for this reviewer’s money, the high-water mark of White House Down is Channing Tatum’s John Cale trying to talk a squirrel off a birdhouse. You see, at the time Cale’s working security for the Speaker of the House, and, as he explains to the squirrel, “my boss hates squirrels.” And even though we haven’t met him yet, you just know this squirrel-hating asshole is going to turn evil in the end. And so Cale pleads with the squirrel. “Come on, squirrel, come down from that birdhouse. For me?” in his best charmingly exasperated, say-hi-to-your-mother-for-me Wahlberg voice (I’ve always thought of Wahlberg as a proto-C-Tates). The stand off eventually ends when C-Tates pulls his Glock on the squirrel (in a cute way), but I could’ve watched that scene for hours. HOURS. Hell, I’d watch a White House Down sequel told entirely from the point of view of that squirrel. That might offer an interesting perspective on things. “Who are these people? What do they want? Why are all the buildings exploding? Why is the president wearing Jordans?” the squirrel might wonder. Friends, watching White House Down, there were times when I identified with that squirrel.

Million dollar idea: Channing Tatum Talks to Farm Animals, The Series

You see, and hold on to your monocle as this may shock you, White House Down is a stupid movie. It aspires to stupidity, realizes that stupidity is something to be aspired to, that a blunt instrument is best for smashing. And that’s fine. There’s a reason Gallagher doesn’t use a scalpel, sometimes nuance just ain’t that fun. On the face of it, White House Down is yet another Die Hard in a ___ movie, which isn’t that interesting. BUT, it’s also basically an interracial buddy cop flick where the black buddy who needs to learn to loosen up also happens to be THE PRESIDENT. That’s so gloriously stupid it’s almost profound. I would watch that movie. But White House Down isn’t quite that movie. It’s sorta stupid, sure, but eventually it’s hamstrung by its own safety scissors.

White House Down can’t quite pull off stupid because it breaks the first rule of stupid moviemaking: keep it stupid, stupid. Above all else, a stupid movie should be facile, uncomplicated, easy to understand. That’s why we like stupid. I didn’t mind the basic politics of White House Down, which are that President Foxx wants to pull all military personnel out of the Middle East, and so now the military industrial complex wants to kill him. You can see as much “liberal propaganda” in that as will get you clicks on your right-wing website (“military industrial complex” was coined by Eisenhower, by the way), but it’s just the vaguely left-wing answer to the model of vaguely-right-wing eighties action movies, from Rambo to Commando on down. It’s not really nuanced enough to even be political, it’s just another example of an action film memorizing just enough talking points for things to explode. Only this time, instead of the Down Syndrome Reaganism we’re used to, White House Down feels more like Jose Canseco’s book report on Confessions of An Economic Hitman. Fine. I rather enjoyed C-Tates telling Jamie Foxx “I know you’re into peace and all, but I really need you to shoot this rocket launcher at some bad guys right now.”

And as “liberal” as it is, it also implies that no matter how accomplished and successful, all black men secretly covet Nikes.

Where it fails is that like almost every recent action movie, the plot is hopelessly convoluted. There are too many bad guys and half of them I don’t even know what they want. There’s James Woods’s disgruntled military industrialist, he’s easy enough to understand. You know he’s bad the second he takes off his flag pin before he goes to work that morning (oh, and because he’s James Woods). He and Peter Weller in Star Trek 2 are almost the same character, come to think of it. But there’s another main bad guy, the one who shot George Washington. He has a major part in the movie and I still have no idea what the hell he wanted. That’s a problem. THIS IS A STUPID MOVIE. STUPID MOVIES ARE SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU FEEL SMART, NOT CONFUSED. CHARACTERS IN STUPID MOVIES HAVE TRANSPARENT MOTIVATIONS. What, did you think we were going to applaud your nuance and ambiguity? The president is telling a guy to get his hands off his Jordans for f*ck’s sake. I’m tired of being asked to be invested in fight scenes where I don’t know what the guys fighting want.

Critics always get accused of not liking dumb action movies, or not being able to suspend disbelief, and while I can’t speak for the rest of the anemic, psuedo-intellectual eunuchs in this business, I can say that *I* LOVE dumb action movies. It’s the crappy directors like Roland Emmerich that ruin them by not understanding what makes dumb action movies good. Roland Emmerich isn’t fit to scrub skidmarks out of Paul Verhoeven’s underwear. Do they think people like Commando or Predator because guns go off and stuff explodes? No. They’re fun because they’re silly, and there’s a silly wit to all the action. There’s a guy getting his arm cut off with a Machete and Arnold calling an alien an “ugly muddafauckah.” You don’t have to blow up the damn Eiffel Tower. Moreover, it’s just not that interesting to watch buildings explode, especially when you’re the fifth movie that summer to do the same thing.

What I’m saying is, White House Down could use a lot more Channing Tatum arguing with squirrels and a lot less Channing Tatum outrunning bullets, which he does roughly every five minutes. I mean, I’m sure he’s fast, but that’s not even really playing to what makes C-Tates C-Tates. It’s generic. Here’s what Channing Tatum dodging bullets should look like:

I’m fine with all the clichés – the know-it-all daughter who’s so mad at her father that she calls him by his first name (good little actress though, incidentally), the supervisor reading the resume (“candidate is full of potential that he seems determined not to realize,” hahahaha), the bad guy who sucks lollipops and listens to classical music (played by McPoyle from It’s Always Sunny), the computer dude who can HACK INTO ANYTHING, the nerd who grows a pair at just the right moment. Again, fine. The problem is that for so much of the movie they’re just going through the motions. Plane explodes, helicopter explodes, capitol building explodes, blah blah blah. At one point, there’s 20 minutes straight of boring explosions before what turns out to be a false ending, when C-Tates says “But wait! This isn’t over! I saw so-and-so talking to whatshisface just before such-and-such! There’s another plot afoot!”

I’m telling you, at that moment you could feel the audience let out a collective groan as if to say, “Really? This movie isn’t f*cking over yet?”

And we STILL don’t find out what that one bad guy wanted. Points for squirrels and Jordans, bros, but this is NOT how you make a stupid movie.

Did you review Olympus Has Fallen? I can’t remember. I was dragged to that one by my sister with horrible expectations and it actually turned out to be pretty entertaining. Not only was it fast-paced and stupid as shit, but it had glorious R rated violence throughout.

It’s been a gripe of mine for years that they’re making action movies too complicated. Whenever I’m ranting about those garbage Transformers movies people always tell me that I just need to “shut my brain off”. I would absolutely love to do that. Nothing would please me more. But Michael Bay won’t let me do that because he stuffs 10 plots into his movie and constantly shoves exposition down my throat to the point where I’m having trouble knowing what’s going on during a scene where robots are punching each other. That should be so much simpler.

I don’t even know that they’re making actions movies more, or too, complicated these days. I mean, look, the original Die Hard is actually a relatively complex story but it’s just told exceptionally well. Think about it, here are the plot points:

– Main Character is on the outs with his wife. But he wants to do right by her (and their kids) so he shows up hoping things will work out.
– This makes him the literal and metaphorical ‘outsider’ at Nakatomi Plaza for the events of the film. Nobody there knows him. And because of that the terrorists don’t expect him.
– The 80s was full-blown Cold War time, when there were a shit ton of different terrorist groups running around all trying to do stupid shit, mostly in the name of communism. And the plot pings on that by making you think these Eastern European fuckers are trying make a USSR > USA political statement.
– SWERVE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!! They’re just ambitious thieves.
– Also, now it’s a buddy cop movie. And the buddy cops don’t even know each other.
– Oh, it’s also a siege movie.
– All of the excitement takes place in one location. Sure, it’s a 90 story building or whatever, but the geographic restrictions on where the action can mean it can’t all be blowing shit up, and that’s where you get really good tension and suspense (the air vent, the elevator shaft etc.)
– Also, the fact that it all takes place in the building makes it realistic that McClane can actually come face-to-face with the main bad guy. Because he’s there. In the fucking building. McClane doesn’t have to magically track the guy all over the place and show up at his secret lair.

And then you work in the comedy. And a couple of explosions. And you’ve got a fucking wicked film. It’s actually fairly complex.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You are totally right in that, on the surface, it might seem simple. Wrong place, wrong time = movie poster tagline, and all.
I think the main problem in Hollywood (as in any other field, whether it’s music or art or fashion or whatever) is that there are a very few people are actually incredibly fucking awesome at what they do (be it scriptwriting, directing etc.) and then there is a pretty decent layer of people who are just good at what they do, and then there is a massive, fucking thick layer of people who suck. And a lot of films come out of that massive, thick layer.

@Iron Mike You’re absolutely right. The thing about the complexities of Die Hard is that they are on a second level where the main conflict is at the forefront of the movie. It allows you to be drawn into those complexities with a simple conflict and fun action. A lot of movies today are obsessed with the complexities and highlighting those as if they’re the main draw of the movie rather than the basic emotion of the scenes and the characters. So everything feels so expository. Man of Steel, for instance had Superman becoming Superman buried under a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo about terraforming and blood codexes and Kryptonian natural water births with dolphins and shit.

“We sat and shot terrorists with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been protecting the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Jamie – he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer and telling us not to touch his Jordans.”

Stay tuned for the sequel, White Hat Down, wherein the Pope (played by Liam Neeson) must survive a terrorist attack on the Vatican with the help of a newly arrived Cardinal (played by Tyrese Gibson) with a mysterious past.

How dare you. Tates is a national fucking treasure and Tyrese is a crime against humanity. Jamie Foxx is similar to Tates in that he can work effectively in a variety of genres, although JF is probably less likable in real life.

@ishd–saying, it’s a tricky question. But I would nominate Foxx off the top of my head because his offscreen persona is appealing and you can put him into any type of movie. And no, I don’t see Tates getting an Oscar any time soon, but JF doesn’t really do those kinds of roles anymore.

Guys like Vince and Burnsy should be able to say, “Whaddyamean you don’t want to let me in to this screening? I am firstname lastname!” Then they hold up their smartphone, and all of us from the internet are like “YEAH!!!”

All roads lead back to Predator. Pretty sure I can recite that whole movie by memory.

SO YOU COOKED UP THIS STORY AND DROPPED THE 6 OF US IN A MEAT-GRINDAH WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU DILLON YOU USED TO BE SOMEONE I COULD TRUST I WOKE UP WHY DON’T YOU YOU’RE AN ASSET AN EXPENDABLE ASSET AND I USED YOU TO GET THE JOB DONE GOT IT MY MEN ARE NOT EXPENDABLE AND I DON’T DO THIS KIND OF VWORK

“The Guy who shot Georgie Washington”‘s goal the bs money James Woods was leading them on to but since C-Tates killed Billy it became personal!! (Billy saved his life not once but TWICE!) Also killing Billy was supposed to highlight how awesome Cale is at his job even though a majority of him firing is spraying and praying around corners and he somehow dodges more bullets than the Matrix. CNN for some reason tells everyone there is a leak on the inside and who is doing it, the White House passes fall out for leverage, Emily’s youtube channel is super awesome! Hacker only wanted in to swipe his file clean on every server, why kill the Lollipop King? Lastly, the moment the VP blew up and someone had to call his wife and someone received a page I thought it was obvious as all hell.

I was really surprised at how bad the CG was. That was some turrible green screen. I was initially excited thinking we were about to see some neo-confederate militia-types going all Nathan Bedford Forrest. The problem with Olympus was the bad guys. Sorry, North Koreans are not a credible threat. A bunch of crazy, ex-special forces, Aryan army psychos is much scarier. But I really enjoyed C-Tate’s.

Just watched Olympus, wasn’t THAT awful. But I chalk it up to the ‘R’ rating. Action movies are just better when they can show a guy getting stabbed in the face.

That said, I think I’d rather super glue my peehole shut than ever have to watch Olympus again, so if Vince is saying that in the battle of White House movies, that White House Down is the Wyatt Earp and not the Tombstone version… then I will have to take a firm PASS on that gas.